Gold and the US dollar: Hedge or haven?

Using a model of dynamic conditional correlations covering 23 years of weekly data for 16 major dollar-paired exchange rates, this paper addresses a practical investment question: Does gold act as a hedge against the US dollar, as a safe haven, or neither? Key findings are as follows. (i) During the past 23 years gold has behaved as a hedge against the US dollar. (ii) Gold has been a poor safe haven. (iii) In recent years gold has acted, increasingly, as an effective hedge against currency risk associated with the US dollar.     

Where Are They Now? An Analysis of the Life Cycle of Convertible Bonds

We study the determinants of the life convertible bonds' life span issued between 1980 and 1998. About 60% of the bonds survive either to a call or to their maturity. The issuers of the remaining bonds are delisted during the life of their bonds. Calls and delistings shorten the average life span of convertibles from the original 17 years to an effective life span of only seven years. Issuer's post‐issuance performance and investment behavior affect the effective life of convertibles. Our results support the sequential financing hypothesis, as bonds issued by firms with speedier investment schedules have shorter life spans.     

When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis,Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks

Previous research uses negative word counts to measure the tone of a text. We show that word lists developed for other disciplines misclassify common words in financial text. In a large sample of 10‐Ks during 1994 to 2008, almost three‐fourths of the words identified as negative by the widely used Harvard Dictionary are words typically not considered negative in financial contexts. We develop an alternative negative word list, along with five other word lists, that better reflect tone in financial text. We link the word lists to 10‐K filing returns, trading volume, return volatility, fraud, material weakness, and unexpected earnings.     

Is faster or slower trading better? An examination of order type execution speed and costs

We examine order type execution speed and costs for US equity traders. Marketable orders that execute slower exhibit lower execution costs. Those who remove liquidity faster and pay higher trading costs transact in smaller size, spread trading across more venues, take more liquidity, and are better informed. Nonmarketable limit orders that execute slower exhibit greater adverse selection; and larger, uninformed traders who concentrate their trading in fewer venues submit them. Our findings suggest that slowing down the trading process, when faster options exist, can benefit certain market participants who seek to cross the bid–ask spread.     

The Consequences of Issuing Convertible Bonds: Dilution and/or Financial Restructuring?

Historically, most convertible bond (CB) issues have been converted to equity sooner or later. The announcement of a CB issue will bring about a future dilution of the firm's capital, and is often followed by a drop in share price. However, a CB issue by itself creates future value for the shareholders if it enables the firm to make profitable investments. It can also issue a positive signal regarding the restructuring of the firm's financial liabilities and its attempts to optimise its financial structure. These positive effects, if they occur, will develop gradually after the issue, and cannot be identified by a simple short‐term event analysis of a CB issue announcement. In this paper, we test the significance of the dilution effect, coupled with a possible value creation effect, using data from the French stock market. We introduce a comparison between dilutive convertibles and non‐dilutive exchangeable bonds. By integrating different corrections and by selecting a window of analysis over a longer period after the announcement of the issue, we show that the negative cumulative average abnormal returns generally observed in previous studies become non‐significant. This absence of global incidence is indicative of large differences in individual behaviour by issuers of CBs, and leads us to take into account the strategic choices linked to the issue of a CB. Two goals, often described as ‘investment financing’ or ‘financial restructuring’, may exist when issuing, and may appear to explain the size of the abnormal returns.     

Pick Your Poison—Fragmentation or Market Power? An Analysis of RegNMS,High Frequency Trading,and Securities Market Structure

The publication of Michael Lewis's has intensified an already contentious debate over high frequency trading (HFT). But the causes that have given rise to HFT are more complicated—and the general economic consequences far more positive—than at least the popular accounts (including Lewis's own) of the book would suggest. While directing much of its attention to the powerful computers and “predatory” potential of HFT, the “media” version of Lewis's book has all but ignored the fundamental driver of such activity: the implementation in 2007 of SEC Regulation NMS, which required all exchanges to direct their orders to the exchanges with the best prices. Before RegNMS, U.S. equity trading was largely dominated by NYSE and Nasdaq. The major exchanges' effective “ownership” of their order flow gave exchange specialists significant edges in trading. RegNMS has resulted in the proliferation of competing stock exchanges, which in turn has dramatically reduced both trading costs and the economic franchise value enjoyed by institutional traders associated with the previously dominant exchanges. The balance of evidence strongly indicates that the cost of trading has declined for retail traders and investors. The big losers have been the previously advantaged wholesale traders. HFT is simply one of the outcomes of the new, more competitive trading environment created by Regulation NMS.     

An Empirical Analysis on the Relationship between Regional Financial Development and the Change of Urban-rural Income Inequality, Is It Inverted U or U ？

针对区域金融发展与城乡收入分配差异变化的关系问题,在前人基于2007年县市横截面数据实证研究得到＂倒U关系＂的基础上,继续收集1912个样本县市2005、2007、2009年共三年的数据,改变统计指标和样本范围,再次运用非参数Kendallτ相关性检验方法进行实证分析,不分组检验都得到正相关,分组检验没有得到显著的整体＂倒U关系＂,反而是＂U关系＂,但是得到局部的＂倒U关系＂和＂U关系＂,有一些是统计显著的,而另一些不是统计显著的。这说明经济理论、样本数据、检验方法并不是恰好吻合的,需要深入探索其中的复杂性。     

Is Group Affiliation Profitable in Emerging Markets? An Analysis of Diversified Indian Business Groups

Emerging markets like India have poorly functioning institutions, leading to severe agency and information problems. Business groups in these markets have the potential both to offer benefits to member firms, and to destroy value. We analyze the performance of affiliates of diversified Indian business groups relative to unaffiliated firms. We find that accounting and stock market measures of firm performance initially decline with group diversification and subsequently increase once group diversification exceeds a certain level. Unlike U.S. conglomerates' lines of business, and similar to the affiliates of U.S. LBO associations, affiliates of the most diversified business groups outperform unaffiliated firms.     

Do Leverage,Dividend Payout,and Ownership Concentration Influence Firms' Value Creation? An Analysis of Brazilian Firms

This study uses a sample of 213 Brazilian firms listed between 1995 and 2004 to examine the effect of the presence or absence of growth opportunities on the subsequent effect of leverage, dividend payout, and ownership concentration on firm value. First, we find that leverage plays a dual role: whereas it negatively affects the value of firms with growth opportunities (i.e., underinvestment theory), it positively affects the value of firms without growth opportunities (i.e., overinvestment theory). Second, we find that dividends play a disciplinary role in firms with fewer growth opportunities by reducing free cash flow under managerial control. Finally, the results show that ownership structure has a nonlinear effect—that is, ownership concentration initially improves the value of most firms. However, after a certain threshold, in firms with growth opportunities, the risk increases that large shareholders expropriate wealth at the expense of minority shareholders.     

Asset Pricing and Share Reforms: An Anatomy of China’s Investable Stocks

This paper investigates the impact of China’s 2001–2003 share reforms on its investable stocks’ asset-pricing mechanisms. We show that the reforms have caused the size and dividend effects to attenuate for B shares but not for H/red-chip shares; the book-to-market effect to strengthen for H/red-chip shares but not for B shares; the liquidity effect to lessen more for H/red-chip shares than for B shares; and the earnings-to-price effect to decline for H/red-chip shares but not for B shares. These results have practical implications for investors of China’s investable stocks and for the Chinese companies that issue investable shares.     

Is financial reporting shaped by equity markets or by debt markets? An international study of timeliness and conservatism

We hypothesize debt markets—not equity markets—are the primary influence on “association” metrics studied since Ball and Brown (1968 J Account Res 6:159–178). Debt markets demand high scores on timeliness, conservatism and Lev’s (1989 J Account Res 27(supplement):153–192) R ², because debt covenants utilize reported numbers. Equity markets do not rate financial reporting consistently with these metrics, because (among other things) they control for the total information incorporated in prices. Single-country studies shed little light on debt versus equity influences, in part because within-country firms operate under a homogeneous reporting regime. International data are consistent with our hypothesis. This is a fundamental issue in accounting.     

Is earnings management opportunistic or beneficial? An agency theory perspective

Earnings management has been cast into negative light due to the recent corporate scandals and, therefore, is viewed as detrimental to the firm. Enron and Worldcom represent two of the most egregious cases of opportunistic earnings management that led to the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history. However, some argue that earnings management may be beneficial because it improves the information value of earnings by conveying private information to the stockholders and the public. We offer agency theory as a tool to distinguish between the opportunistic and beneficial uses of earnings management. The empirical evidence suggests that firms where earnings management occurs to a larger (less) extent suffer less (more) agency costs. Moreover, a positive relation is documented between firm value and the extent of earnings management. Taken together, the results reveal that earnings management is, on average, not detrimental.     

Is mark-to-market accounting destabilizing? Analysis and implications for policy

Fundamental economic principles provide a rationale for requiring financial institutions to use mark-to-market, or fair value, accounting for financial reporting. The recent turmoil in financial markets, however, has raised questions about whether fair value accounting is exacerbating the problems. In this paper, we review the history and practice of fair value accounting, and summarize the literature on the channels through which it can adversely affect the real economy. We propose a new model to study the interaction of accounting rules with regulatory capital requirements, and show that even when market prices always reflect fundamental values, the interaction of fair value accounting rules and a simple capital requirement can create inefficiencies that are absent when capital is measured by adjusted book value. These distortions can be avoided, however, by redefining capital requirements to be procyclical rather than by abandoning fair value accounting and the other benefits that it provides.     

Is There Market Discipline in the European Insurance Industry? An Analysis of the German Insurance Market

Economists often argue in favour of market discipline as a means to distribute resources effectively and efficiently. These same arguments likely influence decision-makers as they incorporate market discipline as the third pillar of Solvency II, the European insurance regulatory scheme currently being implemented. Success for Solvency II, then, is dependent in part on the strength of influence found in market discipline. Our research indicates that the German insurance market demonstrates the existence of such discipline, although the actual effect appears smaller than previously found in the U.S. insurance market. Solvency II, therefore, seems to be following an appropriate path, although further research is needed to evaluate whether or not enhancements to market discipline within the European market are warranted.     

Helping hands or grabbing hands? An analysis of political connections and firm value

We construct a unique political connection index to capture variations in the strength of firm political relations in China. The index incorporates various channels through which a firm's executives, chairperson, directors, and other senior officers are politically connected with government officials and bureaucrats. Overall, there is a negative relation between our index and firm value for the full sample, but such negative relation mainly exists for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and it becomes positive for non-SOEs. Furthermore, close examination shows an inverted U-shaped relation between political connections and firm value for the full sample in general and for non-SOEs in particular: Firm value increases initially at a lower level of connections and then begins to decrease at a higher level. The findings are consistent with the different business objectives and motivations of SOEs and non-SOEs in seeking political connections. Finally, our findings are robust after controlling for potential endogeneity and using an alternative headcount index construction method.     

Is the Mean Return of Hotel Real Estate Stocks Apt to Overreact to Past Performance?

This study examines the return patterns of hotel real estate stocks in the U.S. during the period from 1990 to 2007.We find that the magnitude and persistence of future mean returns of hotel real estate stocks can be predicted based on past returns, past earnings surprise, trading volume, firm size, and holding period. The empirical evidence found from this paper confirms that short-horizon contrarian profits can be partially explained by the lead-lag effects, while in the intermediate-term price momentum profits and long-term contrarian profits can be partially attributed to the firms’ overreaction to past price changes. Our results support the contrarian/overreaction hypothesis, and they are inconsistent with the Fama-French risk-based hypothesis or the underreaction hypothesis. The study also confirms the earning underreaction hypothesis and finds the high volume stocks tend to earn high momentum profits in the intermediate-term. The study finds that the earning momentum effect for hotel stocks is more short-lived and smaller in magnitude than the market average. Price momentum portfolios (or contrarian portfolios) of big hotel firms underperform small hotel firms and the hotel price momentum portfolio (or contrarian portfolios) significantly underperform the overall market over the intermediate-term (or the long-term). These findings imply that the U.S. hotel industry, particularly the big hotel firms, have experienced relatively conservative growth in the sample period. It suggests that a conservative hotel growth strategy accompanied by an internal-oriented financing policy is proper in a period of prosperity.     

Is There a Size Effect in the Pricing of Stocks in the Chinese Stock Markets?: The Case of Bull Versus Bear Markets

Size effect studies generally suggest that a return premium exists for small firms. While the size effect has mostly disappeared in recent years in mature markets (e.g., US and UK), it remains mostly strong in developing markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between firm size and excess stock returns in the Chinese stock markets, and to examine this effect in both a bull and bear market. No studies have previously examined these relationships in the Chinese markets. The results of the study indicate that a size effect exists in the Chinese stock markets over the 6-year period from 1998 to 2003. We find small firms have significantly greater excess returns than large firms. Moreover, small firms are found to have a stronger reaction to the direction of the market than large firms. Small firms have significantly greater positive excess returns than large firms during the bull market. However, small firms have significantly greater negative returns (using total market value), or no significant difference in returns (using float market value) during the bear market period.     

Is There a Difference Between Solicited and Unsolicited Bank Ratings and, If So, Why?

This paper analyses the effect of soliciting a rating on the actual outcome of bank ratings. Using two sample banks (one rated by Fitch and one rated by S&P), I find evidence that unsolicited ratings tend to be lower than solicited ones, after accounting for differences in observable bank characteristics. This downward bias does not seem to be explained by the fact that better-quality banks self-select into the solicited group. Rather, unsolicited ratings appear to be lower because they are based on public information and are therefore dependent on the quantity of public information disclosed by the banks. As a result, unsolicited ratings tend to be more conservative than solicited ratings, which incorporate both public and non-public information. While the latter result is also consistent with the fact that credit rating agencies may blackmail low-disclosure firms, the findings suggest that blackmailing—if it is actually used—is ineffective in making these firms start to pay for a rating.